We love Twitter. We tweet daily, interacting with friends, brands and people we’ve never met. We share other bloggers’ posts and retweet everything from inspirational quotes to technical tutorials.
Twitter is one of our main social channels and so in this issue of our “Become a Better Blogger” email series, I thought I’d go deeper into how we use Twitter on our main account @5minutesformom.
But first I must apologize for not emailing you last week. It was Super Bowl Sunday and my Internet and TV service went down for 24 hours!!!
Yes, I couldn’t do my work or watch the game. I wasn’t alone… everyone in our city who uses our largest provider lost service on that very important day. People were seriously freaking out. We found out later the outage was due to cable theft. While I don’t really blame the company as it wasn’t their fault, it sure was frustrating.
By the time I had Internet access on Monday afternoon, I was so behind in my work, I decided to skip the email and hope you forgive me. ;)
Anyway… since I do have
Internet access now, I will continue and share our Twitter strategy.
What We Do
Tweet our blog
posts
Yes, one of the main ways we use Twitter is to share our own blog posts. But that’s only one very small part of the picture. We don’t measure the value of our time on Twitter based on the referral traffic it sends to our blog. While it does send some traffic, it is a small fraction of what Pinterest
sends.
Twitter is more important to us for building and strengthening relationships and getting noticed by brands and other bloggers.
And our favorite use of Twitter is to…
Tweet friends’ blog posts
My favorite way to use
Twitter is to show support to my blogging friends by tweeting out their blog posts.
We’re all trying to get exposure for the blog posts we work so hard writing. I love that I can show my friends support by tweeting their content.
RT friends' tweets
While often I will tweet a blog post directly from the blog,
other times I’ll simply RT a friend’s tweet that links to her post.
Tweet influential and useful blog posts
A very important strategy to make your Twitter stream valuable and interesting is to share high quality content from influential sources.
Reply to tweets directed to us
It’s so important to reply to tweets directed to you… see below for more on this.
Host and participate in Twitter Parties and Twitter Chats
We love Twitter Parties and Chats! We often are compensated to host, co-host, or act as panelists and sometimes we
simply participate for fun.
Watch Twitter Party statistics for our own parties
When we host a Twitter Party, we gather and deliver to our client the party statistics using
Hashtracking.com.
Schedule tweets using Buffer App
We find the simplest tool for scheduling tweets is
http://bufferapp.com. Scheduling tweets is so important to spread out your updates and keep your stream consistent.
Use Twitter Lists
We depend on Twitter Lists to find and engage with key groups of people. Since we follow so many people, our main stream is too full to use productively. When I follow someone new, I add them to the appropriate lists so that I can find them later.
Follow other bloggers
with similar interests and followings
We’re continually following other bloggers on Twitter. Whenever I read a blog post that I really like on a blog I haven’t visited before, I click through to their Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Google+ accounts and follow them.
Follow influential bloggers, social media experts and other authorities
It’s important to go beyond just friends and peers, and to follow
influencers and experts in your field.
What We Don’t Do
Debate
We don’t think Twitter is an effective platform for debate.
Twitter is a great way to
make your voice heard. So for many bloggers, it does make sense to use Twitter to spread their opinions and their arguments.
If a blogger is an advocate for a certain issue, and that is part of her brand, then of course it makes sense to use Twitter to advocate on that topic.
But while Twitter is a good platform for putting your opinion out to specific people, corporations and to the world at large, (and it’s also good for having that opinion escalated and joined by others,) we feel it’s not generally a good platform for debate.
Tweets are short, disconnected and lack the flow of logic to support intelligent, meaningful debate that can positively influence and change opinions.
When a “conversation” around a hashtag
trends on Twitter, random people from all over start jumping in to the stream without understanding what the backstory and point of the discussion is.
There’s no way for people to all “get on the same page” as to what people are talking about, what they mean and what the intention of the conversation
is.
People instantly make snap judgements based on a few words.
Trolls jump on the stream and cause havoc with tweets that
attack just for the sake of causing trouble and escalating negativity.
The “conversation” can go wildly out of control very quickly and cause hurt and seriously damage relationships. We want no part of that side of Twitter.
Engage in controversy or publicly "call out" or bash brands or other bloggers
We don’t like to publicly “call out” or attack anyone online. It’s against our personalities and against our brand.
Our brand is…
5 Minutes for Mom
“Bringing Moms Together”
We intentionally never blog or share anything we think will divide or alienate part of our audience.
To be honest, this can be hard. We often want to share our political opinions or take a stand on a particular topic, but we choose not to.
For us, “bringing moms together” is more important than any one particular issue. We are committed to finding
what unites us all rather than what separates us.
Yes, we lose traffic by not being able to write a controversial post and take a stand on a hot topic. And many times over the last 8 years, we’ve had to hold each other back from writing a particularly heated post.
But this is what makes sense for our brand.
It might not be what makes sense for you or your brand. You can bring great amounts of traffic and attention to your
site by taking a position on a controversial topic. But before you do, ensure that it is in line with your own brand and that you are being intentional about what you’re posting and not only reacting in the moment.
Spread
negativity
We use Twitter for helpful sharing and we stay away from any negativity.
What We Should Do More
Reply to more tweets and engage in more conversations
One of our biggest weaknesses on Twitter is that we don’t spend enough time replying to tweets and engaging in more live conversations. One of the reasons we love Twitter Parties is that it provides an easy way to chat back and forth and have those live conversations.
But overall, if I were to choose one area that we need to improve the most, it is replying to tweets and participating in more threads of conversation.
Overall we use Twitter to
Share.
Mostly we use Twitter to share blog posts from other bloggers and join in Twitter parties and chats as well as find and meet new bloggers and brands. It’s our second favorite social channel - after Pinterest.